Last summer, LucasArts revealed their plans for a new ‘Star Wars’ game that explored a darker, grittier side of a galaxy far, far away. However, production and development on ‘Star Wars 1313’ stalled when the company closed earlier this year. While EA has since taken over the video game rights to the newly acquired Disney franchise, the fate of the game is still up in the air and it hasn’t officially been put back on the schedule. But even though it’s remaining dormant for the time being, it’s technology used in the game is being utilized to revolutionize the film industry.

While speaking at a BAFTA event in London, Lucasfilm’s chief technology strategy officer Kim Libreri showed off some technology used for ‘1313’ that may eliminate the need for an extensive post-production phase during the filmmaking process. Essentially, they’ve developed a way to potentially combine aspects of video game and movie creation together to produce a finished scene with special effects immediately after shooting. Here’s what Libreri boasts about their new breakthrough:

“Everyone has seen what we can do in movies… We think that computer graphics are going to be so realistic in real time computer graphics that, over the next decade, we’ll start to be able to take the post out of post-production; where you’ll leave a movie set and the shot is pretty much complete.”

Of course, this won’t eliminate the post-production process all together, but things might be easier everyone working on the film to have this real time motion capture technology be a part of production. Libreri goes on to tout the advantages of their work:

“There’s so many things that you can do with the fact that video graphics is going to be real-time and not this post-process that we’ve had traditionally.

If you combine video games with filmmaking techniques, you can start to have these real deep, multi-user experiences. Being able to animate, edit and compose live is going to change the way we work and it’s really going to bring back the creative experience in digital effects.”

To get a better understanding of what he’s talking about, check out the video demonstration below:

Currently, it’s uncertain if J.J. Abrams will utilize this sort of technology while filming ‘Star Wars: Episode VII’, but Disney’s newest member of the family is certainly bringing the big guns to the fight and advancing the game in all areas of entertainment.

What do you think of this new real time motion capture technology? What are some of the biggest positives that you can see from the further development of this new advancement? Share your thoughts in the comments.

 

Source: The Inquirer